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Megan Martnez brings out orders at the Daly Drive-In. The Daly Drive-In on Plymouth Road in Livonia is the sole remaining location of the Daly chain. Popular items include the DalyDog, Dalyburger and the Chee-Chee. / Kathleen Galligan/DFP

Chick Inn manager Jake Popiolek delivers food to Carmen Washington of Nashville. Washington, who grew up in the area, has been eating at Chick Inn for over 18 years. 'Every time I come home, I make sure to come eat some food here,' said Washington. / Jarrad Henderson/Detroit Free Press

At Bill's Drive In, in Ypsilanti, there are no speakers to call for curb service and no written menus. They seem an unnecessary complication at this endearingly odd little place with only four food items and six drink choices. / Jarrad Henderson/Detroit Free Press

There’s something about summer in metro Detroit that makes car lovers of all ages nostalgic for the heydays of cruising in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Even if you weren’t around then, you’ve heard the stories of those who were.

One essential part of the cruising experience was pulling into a drive-in and having a carhop hang a metal tray of burgers, fries and cherry Cokes on your half-rolled-down window.

Until Sonic restaurants repopularized the concept, drive-ins were a disappearing breed. Many of metro Detroit’s most famous ones closed decades ago, but a handful of the old-time places have hung on, allowing us to experience them the way our parents and grandparents did.

If you’re looking for a destination meal this summer, here are five old-fashioned drive-in restaurants — all more than 50 years old — where burgers and dogs are served with a side of yesterday.

Daly Drive-In

The Daly Drive-In building may look like a typical family dining restaurant out front, but pull around back and you’ll see that the drive-in part is all original. The long, undulating steel roof is white underneath and orange on top, and the speakers at the 20 parking places still work.

Standing on Plymouth Road in Livonia, it’s the sole remaining location of the Daly restaurant chain, which opened 17 restaurants in Wayne and Oakland counties starting in 1948. Owner Scott Grace says the Livonia location was built in 1959 by his father, Bud Grace, the month before he was born.

It’s a local touchstone to many people who grew up in the area, and many who move away come back for a taste of home, Grace says.

“People talk about growing up here, and cruising was big back in the ’60s. I used to worry what would happen when they were gone … but we’re getting their kids and grandkids.”

Grace insists it’s the food — not just novelty or nostalgia — that brings people in.

“Our coney has a different taste than most. And our burger sauce is extremely unique.” It’s so good, he has shipped bottles of the ketchup-based sauce to customers in at least 15 states, and it’s sold at Hiller’s and Busch’s markets.

After the foot-long DalyDog and the Dalyburger, the biggest-seller is the Chee-Chee — melted American cheese and chili on a sesame hamburger bun.

“We always kid about it because there have been probably a thousand people over the years who’ve told us that either they or a friend of theirs invented that sandwich. It used to be a melted cheese sandwich, and people would have chili put on it. And they all think they were the first,” Grace says.

Curb service is available year-round. Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily in summer; after Labor Day, close is 8 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 9 p.m. Friday-Saturday. (31500 Plymouth Road at Merriman; 734-427-4474 and www.dalyrestaurants.com)

Eddie's Drive-In

Back in the day, the coolest drive-in restaurants had waitresses who zoomed around on roller skates to deliver their trays of burgers, fries and shakes. At Eddie’s Drive-In in Harrison Township, they still do.

Manager Melissa LoGrasso, who has been skating out orders at Eddie’s for 24 years, is Eddie’s senior carhop. Her sister, Holly LoGrasso, has worked there 14 years.

“They know how to do everything,” says owner Rocky Maynard, 26, of Warren, who bought the restaurant last year from longtime owners Debby and Bruce Meek. The place opened as an A&W drive-in 1943 and became Eddie’s in 1987, the year Debby Meek’s father, Edward Cather, bought it.

Maynard wisely didn’t meddle with success. “It’s the same menu. We wanted to stick with the tried-and-true product and give people the things they like to see and experience,” he says. Regulars get the Big Ed burger — a third of a pound of ground round with house-made Thousand Island, lettuce, tomato and onion.

Waitresses wear poodle skirts on Sundays, when classic cars line up around the edge of the lot, says Melissa LoGrasso. “We have a group of regulars who’ve been coming for many years and continue to come for dinner and ice cream.” A classic car club also comes on Wednesdays.

Maynard says he bought Eddie’s because, “Honestly, I’m kind of a car guy. It was the appeal of taking your car and sitting there and eating there — of having a good time and good food. And I love chocolate shakes, and Eddie’s (shakes) are pretty delicious.”

Chick Inn Drive-In

Check out that low-slung boxy building. The pink neon lettering around the edge of the flat roof. The cursive font of the Chick Inn name. The squawking chicken-head logo that looks like a vintage cartoon character.

The free-standing sign in front has a phone number, also outlined in pink neon, that begins with the letters HU instead of 48.

If you could miniaturize the Chick Inn Drive-In, it would be the perfect addition to a 1950s time capsule. It’s so iconic, in fact, that the Ypsilanti Heritage Foundation lists it as a 1955 historic structure.

Menus, mounted with the speakers on poles at the parking places, offer items like the Hammy Sammy and the tall, beefy, Paul Bunyan Burger.

But the thing everyone raves about are the thick, thick shakes, offered in 16 flavors. They taste so good because they’re made with real fruit rather than artificial flavors, says Korean-born owner Young Sun Kim, a Chevrolet design engineer and exterior design manager for the Chevy Volt.

Customers like to mix the flavors of the shakes. “You can combine them. You can have a base of vanilla and add strawberries and chocolate,” says Kim, who came to the U.S. in 2010. The first time he heard about combining chocolate and peanut butter, he says, he didn’t understand it and couldn’t imagine it. But now, he says, “I like it very much!”

Kim says he and his wife, Cindy Kang, bought the Chick Inn because he greatly admires old American automobiles and their history and considered the vintage drive-in “a monument to American car culture.” He especially enjoys seeing people at the drive-in with their old cars, he says. And they all order shakes.

Chick Inn is open 10-10 Monday-Saturday and 10-9 Sunday in summer; it closes at 9 the rest of the year. (501 Holmes; 734-483-3639)

Bill's Drive-In

They keep it simple at Bill’s Drive-In in Ypsilanti, opened in 1939 beside Michigan Avenue.

There are no speakers to call for curb service and no written menus. They seem an unnecessary complication at this endearingly odd little place with only four food items and six drink choices.

When you go to Bill’s, you just pull into the parking lot and ... well, here’s how manager Jim Doe explains it: “They just pull up in the car and the carhop comes and takes the order and relays it to us and we get it right,” says Doe.

The carhops use hand signals from the parking lot to tell the kitchen what you’ve ordered, shaving precious seconds off the wait of ... oh, maybe 3 or 4 minutes? ... before you’re unwrapping your hot food.

If you don’t know the menu, the guy will tell you. And it will be a guy; all the carhops are men. Bill’s five female employees all work inside. “No special reason. That’s just how it has always been,” he says. It must be OK with everyone; all of the 14 employees have been there at least 10 years. Doe, 33, started there when he was 15.

About the food: “We have the chili dogs. ... The chili is homemade,” says Doe. “And we have a loose burger in a hot dog bun. ... And a funny bun, which is the hot dog minus the wiener” — in other words, a bun with chili. (The loose burger is a bun with cooked, crumbled ground beef, in case you’re not from around here.)

Bill’s doesn’t do fries. “Just chips. Plain Ruffles. ... Just to make it easier on everybody. It seems to work, so we haven’t changed it.” Order the homemade root beer or a root beer float. Four Pepsi products also are available.

A coney is $1.40 and root beer is 70 cents; add a bag of chips and tax and you’ve still spent less than $3 for lunch. And plan to pay with cash. Bill’s likes to keep things simple.

Open rain or shine, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday; closed from the end of October until Feb. 1. (1292 E. Michigan Ave.; 734-485-2831)

A&W

A&W may be a national chain, but you can’t find a restaurant that’s much more of a family business than the A&W on 12 Mile in Berkley, owned by Larry and Nancy Streetman since 1987.

Larry Streetman went to work there when he was 15, met his wife there and, over the years, employed all five of their children there.

It opened in 1956, at a time when A&Ws all sold the company’s famous root beer but otherwise had their own menus, Streetman remembers. After McDonald’s arrived with standardized menus all over the country, A&W followed suit in the ’70s and ’80s. Now they’re the same, too, except for a few regional items. “You can get a foot-long here but not out West,” he says.

They still mix the root beer in-house, blending A&W concentrate with water and real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. That’s why the root beer at the restaurants tastes different — and many would say, better — than the grocery store variety.

Streetman’s best times are in spring, when the weather warms up, and again the week before the Woodward Dream Cruise, he says. The A&W, just 1˝ miles west of Woodward, is a popular place for classic car owners to take a break from the bumper-to-bumper, which begins days before the official cruise.

“We get a lot of old cars; we get a little rush then. It’s our biggest week, so we get all prepared and hyped up for that,” he says.

The restaurant also has a front-row seat for the Berkley CruiseFest Classic Car Parade on the Friday evening before the cruise, when about 400 cars drive down 12 Mile through Berkley. (This year’s cruise is Aug. 17.)

Customers order coneys, foot-longs and burgers in about equal numbers, he says, and everyone loves the soft-serve root beer floats. The carhops work year-round. And the red-roofed restaurant with its colorful neon signs stays open until 10 every night in summer through August. (4100 Twelve Mile; 248-547-7126 and www.cruisinaw.com. The Streetmans also own the Clawson A&W at 303 S. Main; 248-588-1814.)